<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Pretending Sparrow by Diary</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23453461">Pretending Sparrow</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diary/pseuds/Diary'>Diary</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Game of Thrones (TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Conversations, Gen, Minor Gilly/Samwell Tarly, Natasha Romanov's Arrow Necklace, POV Natasha Romanov, Tea</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 14:41:40</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>735</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23453461</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diary/pseuds/Diary</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha tracks down a former member of the Red Room. Complete.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Pretending Sparrow</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>She calls herself Gilly now. Gilly Tarly.</p><p>The names sound strange together, but then, Natasha supposes she can’t judge. Several people have made clear their low opinion of her Americanised name.</p><p>Back before Gilly was Gilly, she had a disdain for handlers who would babble. Give her the orders, tell her anything extra she’d need to know, and she’d complete the mission.</p><p>London. Flat smaller than any Red Room dormitory. A job at a small bakery.</p><p>Samwell Tarly is a fat librarian. Earlier, he was delighted to talk to an American, and he spent thirty minutes laying out suggestions when she asked for a recommendation on books involving archery.</p><p>She sips the tea. “Are you sure this is what you want?”</p><p>She never knew the younger woman. Had trouble with accents, but her British one is fairly good. Never showed any hesitation in killing. Blunt-spoken except when on missions.</p><p>“Yes,” Gilly answers. “I like being the person he loves.”</p><p>“Do you love him?”</p><p>Gilly gives her the same look a young girl once gave other sparrows and handlers who occasionally showed some speck of humanity.</p><p>Her fingers itch to wrap around her necklace. “It’s your call, but I wouldn’t recommend using some innocent civilian. Not in this way.”</p><p>Gilly shrugs. “The sex is good. He’s not boring. Some of what he talks about is, but he isn’t. I should have killed his father and brother before you found me. Oh, well. There are ways other than that to handle them.”</p><p>She represses a sigh. “There’s more to marriage than that.”</p><p>“How many times have you been married, then,” is the curious reply.</p><p>“None.”</p><p>“I pretended they were animals. Sam says humans are animals, but I pretended they were rabbits or sheep or, sometimes, rabid dogs. And I killed. It didn’t feel good, but I’ve never been sad killing animals.”</p><p>“Sam will wake me up in the middle of the night to trap some spider and put it outside. And I pretend I agree with his opinion on prison reform and pretend I care about little girls being human trafficked and pretend I agree his little brother isn’t as bad as their father. Usually, I make his dinner, he makes breakfast.”</p><p>Gilly pours herself some more tea. “It’s the easiest I’ve ever had pretending anything.”</p><p>“You don’t have to fight anymore. Kill. There are people who can help you make a life where you can be you without that. I freely choose SHIELD. You don’t need to be loyal to anyone but yourself.”</p><p>“There is no me without that,” Gilly flatly declares. “I kill and I torture and I seduce people. The only time I don’t is when I’m resting or pretending. The Red Room was the strongest. They’ve pretty much fell. I could pretend to be like you, sorry for what I did, wishing I could change things, but I’d rather fall asleep watching telly with Sam and lock us in his mother’s bathroom whenever we have to go to a family birthday party.”</p><p>After a brief debate, she asks, “Why exactly do you lock anyone with you in his mother’s bathroom?”</p><p>“For sex. She has a chair in her tub, and unlike his and Dickon’s old room, the door locks. The sex makes me not want to kill them as much, and it makes him feel better, too.”</p><p>Taking another sip of tea, she inwardly acknowledges, <em>I asked.</em></p><p>“What if- he could find someone real, Gilly. Someone real who loves him.”</p><p>“Then, I guess you’ll be back. You or someone else.”</p><p>“Gilly-” She doesn’t know what to say.</p><p>“Just because I’m pretending to be someone he loves doesn’t mean he’s not mine. I didn’t love the Red Room, and it didn’t love me, but I belonged to it. And I’m much better than it was to belong to. He’s happy.”</p><p>She could kill this woman. Back before Gilly was Gilly, she was a good fighter, but she was never one of the best.</p><p>She could kill her in a way that wouldn’t prevent eventual closure in Sam Tarly.</p><p>“You know how to reach me if you ever want an extraction.”</p><p>Gilly nods.</p><p>“Good luck, then.”</p><p>“Same to you,” Gilly says.</p><p>She leaves Mrs Gilly Tarly’s flat, and later, when she sees Gilly and Sam at a local pub, she hopes he never sees the hard coldness in his pretty, smiling wife’s otherwise sparkling eyes.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>